Agreement Technologies refer to computer systems in which autonomous software agents negotiate with one another, typically on behalf of humans, in order to come to mutually acceptable agreements. An agent may choose whether to fulfil an agreement or not, and it should fulfil it when there is an obligation to do so derived from the standing agreements. Autonomy, interaction, mobility and openness are key concepts studied within Agreement Technologies approach. Semantic alignment, negotiation, argumentation, virtual organisations, trust and reputation and several other technologies are part of the sandbox to define, specify and verify such systems.

The International Conference Series on Agreement Technologies is an interdisciplinary forum that brings together researchers and practitioners working on the various topics comprising this emergent and vibrant field. It provides an avenue to discuss and exchange new ideas and techniques for the design, implementation and verification of next generation open distributed systems centred on the notion of agreement among computational agents.

AT 2018 follows the successful outcome of the previous editions of the International Conference Series on Agreement Technologies: AT 2012 in Dubrovnik, Croatia, AT 2013 in Beijing, China, AT 2015 in Athens, Greece, AT 2016 in Valencia, Spain, and AT 2017 in Évry, France.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

We invite research papers including but not limited to the following topics:

AT 2018 welcomes original, unpublished papers. We especially invite submissions by early-researchers who could benefit from receiving valuable feedback from the discussion-oriented focus of the conference. Best early-researcher paper award together with registration fee waivers for the best papers of early-researchers (PhD students and post-docs) are planned.

Authors are invited to submit papers in the following two categories:

• Full Papers (12-15 pages): Papers in this category should represent original and previously unpublished work that is currently not under review in any conference or journal. Both basic and applied research papers are welcome.

• Short Papers (6-8 pages): These papers are intended for the discussion of ideas and concepts related to research and application of agreement technologies. Examples could include thoughtful critiques of the field, technical discussions of various implementation techniques, methodological contributions, and visionary ideas that propose long-term challenges and new research and application opportunities that are outside the current mainstream of the field.

Each submission will undergo a double-blind peer-review process with three peer reviews. All submissions must be written in English and formatted according to the Springer LNCS style, which can be obtained from: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html . We request the submission of title and abstract prior to paper submission to support the tight schedule of reviewing. Authors must submit their abstracts and papers through the AT2018 Easychair submission site https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=at2018.

AT 2018 proceedings will be published as a Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) post-proceedings volume (www.springer.com/lncs). Revised selected full and short papers describing original, unpublished work accepted and presented at AT 2018 will be included in the post-proceedings. We will give to the authors of accepted and presented papers the opportunity to revise the camera-ready version of their paper(s) in order to incorporate feedback received upon the presentation of their work during the conference.

JCR-RANKED JOURNAL SPECIAL TRACK AND SECTION: AI-Communications and ComSIS

A Special Track in the AI-COMMUNICATIONS Journal ( http://www.iospress.nl/journal/ai-communications/ ) with extended versions of the best high-quality papers from the AT 2018 conference will be published. AI Communications is a JCR-ranked Journal on Artificial Intelligence (AI) which has a close relationship to EurAi (European Association for Artificial Intelligence).

Moreover, if the quantity and quality of submissions justify it, we have arranged also an invitation to a Special Section for AT 2018 of JCR-ranked journal "Computer Science and Information Systems: ComSIS" (www.comsis.org). Submissions will be reviewed according to the policies of these journals.

AT 2018: A forum to discuss and exchange new ideas and techniques for the design, implementation and verification of next generation open distributed systems centred on the notion of agreement among computational agents.